


Never Tell Them What You Love

by Ranni



Category: Avengers, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Awesome Phil Coulson, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Hurt Clint Barton, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, M/M, Missing Teammates, Natasha Romanov Feels, Phil Coulson Has the Patience of a Saint, Phil Coulson is still fake dead, Post-HYDRA Reveal, Protective Avengers, Protective Bruce Banner, Protective Tony Stark, Shameless sickness whump really, Sick Clint Barton, Sick Natasha Romanov, Sick Steve Rogers, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-18 21:53:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10625859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ranni/pseuds/Ranni
Summary: Steve, Natasha, and Clint are affected by a poison on a mission. But while Steve passes his illness in the comfort of Avengers Tower, Clint and Natasha have secluded themselves in their private apartment, where the others cannot find them.OrThe one where Clint and Natasha time-share a kitty, Phil retroactively redeems their birthdays, and people almost die horribly. Again.





	

*******  
Barring a few minor injuries and excepting the mission now referred to only as "The Incident"--which had concluded with Tony burning down a Wal-Mart and Clint and Thor driving an ambulance with eight feral cats in the back--things had been pretty great. They had had a long run of good adventures, which is why Tony knew they were due for an awful one. It was the law of averages after all, and the law had been unusually lenient for awhile now.

 *******

They had won, as usual, but they are a mess.

"God. Jesus. It's in my fucking _mouth_ , even." Clint spits again and again, leaning over, his hands braced against his legs.

"Honestly, Barton, your language..." Cap shakes his head as he wipes at red liquid on his uniform helplessly--at this point it may well be unsalvageable. "What _is_ this stuff?"

Tony laughs at them gleefully, clean and protected by his Iron Man armor. "You guys look like you walked out of a horror movie. Remember in 'Carrie', when the girl at prom was covered in blood, except for her huge, buggy eyes? That's what Widow's face looks like right now. Just big white eyeballs in a sea of red."

She rolls the eyes in question at him.

There is no Shield to check them over after the mission; not anymore. Shield has fallen, and its presence, which had always seemed so burdensome and often unwelcome in the aftermath of a fight is felt keenly now in its absence. Now that everything is over and they are drenched in some mysterious chemical their only options are to go to a hospital and try to explain what happened, or to return to the Tower, clean up, and see what, if anything, comes of this.

The choice is pretty easy.

*******

Another choice is easy as well.

Natasha showers twice as long as normal, careful to use the neutralizing agent that the recently de-Hulked Bruce had thrust into everyone's hands before they scattered to their apartments. She pulls on some comfortable clothes and finds Clint in the communal kitchen, clean and digging his way through a large bowl of Lucky Charms.

He looks up when he sees her walk in, and when their eyes meet she lifts an eyebrow in silent question. His eager smile back is all the answer she needs.

They are gone before any of the others emerge, Clint's half eaten bowl of cereal still sitting on the table.

*******

Natasha and Clint have an apartment in the city, a place they still keep secret from the team, one of the only secrets they really have left. It is where they go when they need a break--a reprieve from Tony's constant posturing and teasing, from Steve's earnest and unintentionally judgmental behavior, from Bruce's self doubt and worry. She and Clint had been a team of their own for almost ten years before the Avengers, and sometimes they need a break from the others, a chance to curl in onto themselves like in the old days, to soak up some silence and recharge.

It is a one bedroom apartment in a not-great part of the city, but neither of them have ever been bothered by the location or semi-dilapidated conditions. In fact, Natasha has long wished that someone would try to mug her, or him, just so they could kick some ass free and clear. The building itself might be run down, but the interior of their apartment is as neat as a pin; partly because they are so rarely in it, between missions and other team activities, and partly because they are orderly people, fighting to control their crazy lives in whatever small ways they can.

Seven years ago she had suggested the idea of them moving off base together and Clint readily agreed, while Phil merely raised an eyebrow at the two of them and wished them luck. Beyond brief stays in their respective childhood homes, it is the first real home either of them have ever had; Natasha had refused to ever count Shield quarters as "home", though she suspects Clint might have considered them as such. It had been fun, in those early months, to slowly furnish the apartment between deployments--a coffee table picked up at a secondhand shop, a couch and armchair carefully selected and saved for and purchased new, a set of silverware that Clint laboriously stole piece by piece over time from the Shield cafeteria. Small knick knacks brought back from foreign countries, and of course, her presents from Phil.

Natasha claimed the single bedroom for herself, and Clint didn't mind, preferring to sleep on the couch anyway. They still shared a bed now and then, though it hadn't been a romantic thing for either one of them in a long time, especially after he and Coulson had started whatever relationship they had going on between them. Typically Natasha liked to sleep alone, but there was something to be said for the warmth of a body beside her, especially when it was someone as safe and dear to her as Clint. She even forgave him for the occasional arm or leg that intruded over the imaginary dividing line that ran down the center of the bed, the same way he forgave her for sticking her feet up under his T-shirt onto his warm back when her toes were cold.

And it is to this tiny, comfortable, and completely secret apartment they escape to now, their cellphones and all other ways to track them left back in Avengers Tower, along with all their other responsibilities. It is a time to disconnect from their strange reality, time to be just Natasha and Clint for awhile, to watch old DVDs and eat pizza, to reminisce without needing to explain back stories to the others.

They can pretend to be normal people, if that's what they want. That is their favorite thing of all.

 ******* 

They retreated here after the Battle of New York. The apartment had been far enough away from the fight that it had not been damaged, and the power was restored relatively quickly. She had taken the first shower and came out to find Clint asleep on the couch, still in his uniform and boots, curled up with her unicorn blanket tucked under his chin. He looked so exhausted, forlorn, and vulnerable that she wasn't even angry at him for getting blood and grime all over their nicest piece of furniture.

Later she shook him awake and he sat passively hunched over in the bathtub while she carefully picked chunks of glass from his body with a pair of tweezers. She tossed piece after piece of bloody gauze into the small trashcan.

"You need some stitches," she told him, but he didn't answer, just laid his forehead onto his drawn up knees. "Clint?" She ran her fingers through his hair, which was dirty. Loki had not put a premium on his servants eating or sleeping, and certainly not on washing. "Let's get you cleaned up, then I'm taking you to Shield, okay? Clint?"

Phil Coulson was dead. It wasn't enough that Loki had enslaved and humiliated Clint, had turned him into a mindless weapon. He had killed Phil as well, taken the person they both had loved so much. There would be no more of his quiet competence, his gentle certainty that they were more than the sum of their dark pasts. There would be no more dryly sarcastic comebacks, no more heartfelt gifts. Phil Coulson was dead.

Natasha would never say so, but sometimes she misses the old Clint, the one who had brought her into Shield. The Clint Barton who would finish a Shield mission and channel his nervous energy into spinning her around on club dance floors, who swung between a preternatural calm on the job and a disturbing impulsivity off of it. The Clint who told inappropriate jokes over the comms just to get a rise out of Coulson, who would huddle with her on noisy quinjets, sharing a magazine. He could break a man's bones with a dark smile one minute and then feed a stray dog his last food ration the next. The Clint who could barely fill out his mission reports--his poor education holding him back despite Coulson's patient coaching--was the same man who never forgot or failed to bring her flowers on her birthday, or the anniversary of the day they met. Even once in Russia, when they had been holed up with nothing, even _then_ he had given her flowers, his fingers drawing them in the dust on a high window, the sunlight streaming through.

Clint had come back from the Loki incident slowly, with great difficulty, but he had done it, had clawed his way back. But he hadn't made it all the way, was never quite the same man he had been before, and maybe never would be. He still had the big grin, the contagious laugh, the easy, friendly demeanor that drew people in, all the things that made him lovable. Natasha is the only one left now who had really known him before, and so if some of his laughs are forced, if some of his smiles are sad around the edges, none of the other Avengers are the wiser. They have only known this Clint Barton, and she would never be the one to expose him as a close and clever fraud. They have always kept each other's secrets.

She misses who he used to be, misses that dichotomy that made him exciting and exhausting, but she also loves the man who remained just as much. She loves who he is now, who he is today.

Here, in their apartment, hiding from everyone else, he is almost his former self again. Calmer, certainly, and much more introspective--as if his time held in Loki's thrall and the death of Phil Coulson had aged him a decade instead of just three days like everyone else--but he is definitely more like the old Clint. The person he can be only when he is with her.

*******

"Home sweet home," Natasha announces when they arrive, and Clint hums happily in agreement. They haven't been back here since a few weeks before Shield fell apart.

He goes to the kitchen, grabs a cup from the cabinet and holds it up to the ice maker on the fridge. It makes a tiny grinding noise, but no ice comes out. It doesn't work, has never worked in all the years they have lived here, but he always checks. He fiddles with the freezer sometimes, researches ideas online, fiddles some more, but nothing he tries fixes it in the slightest. Yet every time they return to this apartment, he tries the ice maker again, as if the problem may have somehow resolved itself in his absence. Natasha isn't sure what this behavior represents more: his obstinate refusal to ever give up, or his quiet hope that miracles might just happen out of his sight.

It's one of the many things that makes him frustrating and endearing in equal measure.

Natasha takes stock of the non-perishables they keep in the cabinets and jots down a short list of groceries to pick up for the next few days. Milk, eggs, and bread will probably be enough, she decides, and maybe some fruit and snacks. Clint puts on the radio and sings along while he wipes down all the surfaces that have grown dusty since their last visit. He has a pleasant singing voice, Natasha thinks, and she likes it best when she hears it like this, carefree and a little absent minded, tumbling over words, not caring if he gets them exactly right or not.

"This house...is clean!" he announces dramatically, then snags her pen effortlessly out of the air when she launches it in his direction. "Is it time to go get groceries, to prepare for the dark days ahead?"

"We don't need much," she tells him. "Why don't you go get what is on this list, plus whatever other dirty carbs you're craving, and I'll pick us up some Chinese food for dinner?" He nods, timing the motion to match the beat of the song still playing. "What do you want me to order for you?"

"Eh, I'm not that hungry; I'll just have some rice I guess." He says it with an innocent expression, but his eyes dance with mischief.

Another Barton habit, and one of his more purely annoying ones; Natasha practically growls in response. "No, you _won't_ ," she seethes. "You always say that, and then end up picking at my food and eating most of it. Choose something real, goddamnit."

He shrugs and checks his wallet for cash, then plucks the grocery list from between her fingers.

"Barton," she warns.

He throws a knowing smile over his shoulder as he leaves. "Just rice for me!" he calls back airily, and she can hear him laughing to himself in the hallway as he heads for the stairs.

"Yeah, you're hilarious," she mutters, but smiles a little, too.

On these trips she only misses having a phone in times like this, when ordering food for delivery would be so luxurious, but there's a restaurant only a few blocks away and it's not really a big deal to walk there. She ends up ordering double portions with plans to hide the extra until she can pull it out triumphantly when he ends up taking hers.

******* 

That evening they curl up on the couch with their food, and he groans when she turns on her DVD of "Pride and Prejudice", which she loves in equal measure to his dislike of it. "Deal with it," she advises sagely, putting her feet in his lap.

"Dearest Natasha," he says as the movie begins, affecting a very passable English accent, "I have heard that Avengers Tower has been let at last! Taken by that amiable Tony Stark fellow...and I hear he has ten zillion pounds per year!" He flutters his hands in mock excitement, chop sticks bobbing between his fingers.

She laughs at his impression. "He is handsome," she answers playfully back, "but not enough to tempt _me_ ; I much prefer that nice young Bruce Banner."

"A brilliant chap, to be certain, but such a dour, serious man. Be a dear and marry a rich man, lovey, if only so I can see you well settled before I die. Oh, Natasha, have you no compassion for my poor nerves!"

"You know, for someone who hates this movie you sure know a lot of the lines," she points out with a grin, stealing some of the rice from his bowl.

"Yeah, well, gathering intel is-- _was_ \--my job...or perhaps it's made a bit of an impression on me in the last fifty times that we've watched it." He sighs dramatically.

"Clint." She murmurs his name contentedly, nestling into him, happy in the way she almost never is, the way she can only be here, with them hidden away, like in the old days. "Clint."

"NattyDoo," he croons back, and she laughs gently at the old nickname, one she hasn't heard him use in years. "Can I be your Mr. Darcy?"

"You could never be Mr. Darcy," she says quickly, "because he's perfect. You, however, are not without your charms." They smile at one another.

In the end neither one of them eat very much of their food, and he falls asleep on the couch before Mr. Darcy even appears in the movie. Natasha puts a pillow over his legs and curls up, half on top of and half beside him, feeling oddly tired as well. She doesn't make too much of it.

It had been a long week.

*******

The first time Tony realized that Natasha and Clint were regularly pulling a runner and hiding from the rest of them, he found it amusing. The Avengers team had newly formed, and the agents were still pulled out occasionally by Shield for missions. What neither their teammates, or even Shield, knew was that the assassins were taking an extra day or two between the mission debrief and their return to the Tower for themselves. It only came to everyone's attention when Fury had called one day, demanding to know where Romanov and Barton were, and no one had any idea. Fury seemed to catch on immediately, cursing angrily and hanging up, while the others had tried to understand.

"Do you think they're in trouble?" Steve was concerned, but Bruce just shook his head.

"They're just taking a break while they have a chance before jumping back into the fray. Can you really blame them?"

Tony couldn't blame them, certainly, but it had stung a bit, the thought that they would want a break from the Avengers, from _him_ , from the luxury of his home. If they wanted more privacy, all they had to do was say so. Because what else could it be? What else could there be that they needed, that he did not provide?

But mostly Tony found it hilarious, a great joke, how the two agents could regularly pull the wool over everyone's eyes.

"Who would have ever thought that spies could be so sneaky?" he would say with a smile every time they realized the assassins had rabbited again, which they started to do regularly every three or four weeks, for a day or two at a time, missions or not.

He remembers very clearly when the vanishing act ceased to be funny. Shield had fallen, been exposed as compromised by Hydra, and it was gone, irretrievably gone. Tony's faith in an organization that he had finally begun to fully trust was proven misplaced, and his terror for his teammates was tangible and consuming. The fact that Bruce had been in the Tower with him the night it all happened was probably the only reason Tony hadn't lost his mind from worry.

Steve and Natasha dragged themselves in the following day, looking worn and concerned but not much worse for wear. Thor was off world, as usual. Barton was still missing.

"Where's Clint?" Tony demanded of Natasha, not caring how tired she looked, how defeated. "Is he in your secret love nest? Where is he?"

"No word from him?" Steve asked, and Tony could see the question pass over his face, unasked.

"Clint is _not_ Hydra!" Natasha snapped. "And don't _ever_ \--don't any of you _ever_ say that, or even _think_ that."

"I never did think that," Tony assured her, and it was true. "So where is he, then?"

"As far as I know he was in South America, on an intel gathering mission. Now? I don't know."

That's when it hit Tony that the loss of Shield meant more than the loss of support for the Avengers, the loss of collaboration and information exchange. It also meant that the huge number of agents and analysts that had been flung into the world on Shield business now had no contacts, no safety net, and no way home. Their organization had kept them hidden and anonymous, and now all were left twisting in the wind, to sink or swim on their own in hostile territory as they would. And while that was a sobering, horrifying thought, even more terrible to Tony was that one of those abandoned people was his friend, was Clint Barton.

The archer reappeared almost two weeks later, right around the time that Tony had convinced himself, despite Natasha's insistence to the contrary, that the man was dead and wasn't coming back. Natasha had seemed confident the whole time, and her face was triumphant when Clint arrived at the Tower, gaunt and exhausted, but blessedly alive.

"I was in Colombia," he explained as they clutched at him, hugged him, even Bruce. Only Natasha stood away from the rest, watching them and smiling smugly. "One minute everything was happening normally, and then the next...it was all gone. It was hellish getting out of there, but we made it. Gutierrez and I split up when we hit US soil; I have no idea what happened to anyone else."

They filled him in the best they could, and informed him, to his obvious relief, that Nick Fury was actually alive. "They thought you were dead," Natasha teased. "Stark practically had your obituary written."

Clint just chuckled, and when Bruce and Steve also smiled a little, Tony shot them all a dark look. They had been every bit as worried as he, but now it seemed like everyone was laughing the whole thing off, and Tony was righteously pissed. "Don't even _think_ ," he snarled, pointing at Natasha, who raised her eyebrows in polite shock at his angry tone, "about taking off to your hidey hole after this. Don't you, _either_ of you, dare. Because you're right, I _did_ think Barton was dead, and that wasn't fucking funny, not in the slightest."

"Maybe it would be best if we all stuck close to home for awhile," Steve agreed mildly, and his use of the word 'home' went a small way to soothing Tony's temper.

Clint shrugged agreeably enough, but Natasha glared at Tony. Their disappearing act had been an open secret left undiscussed by the team as a whole, and her displeasure at the end of that status quo was palpable. Tony glared right back at her, not caring how angry she was.

Later she and Clint holed up in their Tower apartment, but they didn't disappear, not then and not in the months that followed. They had stayed with the team and didn't run.

That is, until now. The day that Captain America announces that he is sick.

*******

Natasha wakes up the next morning not feeling well, and that is very disappointing. She had been hoping to find a walk-in dance class, maybe even ballet, but now knows that is impossible. Her body feels achy and heavy, and her head throbs with the special kind of headache she knows precedes a fever. She lays in bed and ponders the fucking unfairness of life before she forces herself up and into the kitchen for coffee.

"And how are you, on this fabulous Tuesday morning?" Clint asks.

"Ugh."

"Awww, you don't mean that."

"The hell I don't," she grumbles, loading the toaster with more force than is necessary. "I'm sick; getting a cold or something."

"Oh." He frowns. "Are you sure it's a cold? We were covered in a questionable red sludge not even twenty-four hours ago."

Natasha rolls her eyes at him. "It feels exactly like a cold. And look at you--you're hanging. You had that stuff in your mouth for God's sake...if it was poisonous then you would already be dead."

Clint shrugs, not finding much fault with that logic. "Still, it sucks that you're sick."

"Oh well, at least we're here and not at the Tower. I can suffer without Stark's voice multiplying my misery."

She crosses the tiny kitchen to grab a plate when her toe catches on something near the edge of a lower cabinet. She stoops to see what it is and when she sees the little silver bowl her heart gives a painful twist. She picks it up and holds it out toward Clint wordlessly.

He blinks, confused, for a moment, then recognizes it. "Ah," he says gently, a little sadly. "Tao."

The cat. The damned cat they had only gotten to have so briefly, that she had so loved. Tao. He was a mean little thing, haughty and indifferent most of the time but affectionate and snuggly when it suited him. He was jet black, fine boned and delicate, and yet still incongruously dangerous with teeth and claws that he used frequently--it occurs to her now that the parallels between the cat and herself may have been a little on the nose.

She can't remember anymore whose idea it had been, or if it had been a slowly formed group one, the idea of the Shield Cat. Many agents had off base housing, as she and Clint did, but none of them were home with enough regularity to have anything as normal as a pet. And so she and some of the others decided to go in together, to share a pet, taking ownership of it when they would be in the city for a length of time, then passing it along to one of the others when a mission arose. The cat had a different name in every home: Geoff had called it Special Agent Stankface, while Matilda went for the more slightly more classic Midnight. An agent that lived in Brooklyn called him Norman. Natasha had named him Tao after the resourceful cat from the book "The Incredible Journey".

Now Shield was gone. So many agents and technicians left stranded, spread all over the world, with no plan or resources to bring them back. Clint brought himself back through a combination of wit, luck, and stubborn determination. He could have easily been one of the many who never returned. So many people were still missing, and, apparently, so was one cat.

"I wonder who he was with," Natasha says quietly, then unceremoniously drops the bowl into the trash.

"Someone has him, is taking care of him," Clint says confidently, but his eyes, unreadable, stay trained on the trashcan. "We could always get a new one," he offers. "Tao wasn't the only kitty assassin in the world, I'm sure of it."

But she doesn't want to. The cat is the past now; lost as surely as all of those agents. Natasha doesn't let herself feel bad over things, does not look back into the past to torment herself. That is Clint's failing, in his dark moments, but not hers.

She may be a widow, but she does not mourn.

Natasha eats her toast and doesn't say anything more about it. But there is something about it that pulls at her, despite her resolve. Something about remembering that little face, a part of Shield and yet wholly innocent of its schemes, lost in the wind--something about losing that cat hurts.

*******

"Hey, um, Bruce? Can I bend your ear a second?"

Steve sounds unsure of himself, and Tony is immediately interested; any conversation where Steve is uncomfortable is definitely one that he wants to be a part of. The captain stands awkwardly in their shared lab space, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

"Of course. What's up?" Bruce lays down the pipette he is holding and peers at Steve over his glasses with a frown. "You okay?"

"I think I'm coming down with something, actually." And Steve looks as astounded to say that as Bruce and Tony are to hear it.

 *******

He must feel pretty sorry for her--maybe due to the cat discussion or maybe just because of her illness--because he makes her soup for lunch. It's from a can, granted, but chicken soup nonetheless.

"What a good nurse you are, Barton," Natasha says. "You'll make someone a fine wife one day."

"Well, you know me, all heart, give give give give. So, how about now? I brought you soup. _Now_ can I be your Mr. Darcy?" He makes doe eyes at her, batting his eyelashes dramatically.

"You could never be Mr. Darcy; he is filthy rich and never prepared a bowl of soup in his life. I also highly doubt he would drink coffee straight from the pot like a damned monster."

"Hmph," he grumbles, good-naturedly. "I drink coffee the way the Good Lord intended, I assure you."

She thinks he might go out and enjoy a free day, but instead he stays in the apartment with her, making sympathetic noises as her fever settles in and rises. That afternoon he picks "E.T." for them to watch, but again falls asleep just a few minutes after the title rolls.

That's when it occurs to her that Clint isn't feeling well either.

*******

 Natasha lays on the bed, too many blankets piled on top of her. She is smarter than this; her fever is high and intellectually she knows she needs to let her body cool down, but instead she pulls the covers more tightly around herself as she shivers uncontrollably.

Clint is there, trying to care for her, keeps pulling the blankets out of her clawed hands. "Give it up, Romanov," he cajoles, trying to smile. "Step away from the blankies and no one has to get hurt."

"Go directly to hell, I'm cold."

"You're not, though. How about just one blanket? You don't need six; you're gonna smother." He's still grinning at her but looks tired, so tired. There are dark circles under his eyes, and she knows that his pale, clammy skin is a perfect mirror of her own.

"Give me my unicorn one, then," she snarls. It's the heaviest.

********

 "What is...this?" she had asked, not bothering to hide her confusion at the contents of the gaily wrapped gift box. It was a king sized fleece blanket with a white unicorn on it, rearing back majestically on its back legs, over a lavender background. Her initial thought was that it looked like something a preteen girl would have on her bed. Which, as it turned out, was exactly the point.

Phil called it The Childhood Redemption Tour, and made it his personal, multi-year project. The unicorn blanket had been her first of those presents. "I thought my two favorite assets deserved to catch up on some of the good things you missed out on while life was busy shitting all over you."

Clint sat like a statue, staring into a box filled with GI Joes with a blank, inscrutable expression. He pulled one of them out, inspected it, dropped it back into the box. Phil frowned a little, obviously disappointed.

"I thought you would like them," he said finally. "Or if not, laugh at the very least." Phil reached out toward the package in Clint's hands, as if to take it back.

But Clint surprised him by tightening his grip on the box, curling his body over it protectively. "I _do_ like them," he said, but his voice was oddly stiff. "I do. Thank you."

"So do I," Natasha agreed. "It is a kind idea." A strange gift, she thought, and definitely one where the thought counted.

She put the blanket on her bed that night, and sometimes snuggled under it on the couch in the winter months. She didn't know what Clint did with the GI Joe figures; she never saw them again.

The presents had started that Christmas and continued through her and Clint's birthdays. By the time Christmas rolled around again she found herself looking forward to the event with an unfamiliar excitement. It occurred to her then that it must be how most normal people about the holiday--that excitement, that anticipation. She had never felt that way about it before, and the unique feeling was another gift from Phil, maybe the best one of them all.

The Childhood Redemption Tour carried on through the next few years--Phil gave her a beautiful porcelain doll with black curls one time, then a diary with a lock on it another, while giving Clint a stuffed Snoopy dog, a baseball glove. Again, she displayed her treasures. Again, his disappeared.

Natasha couldn't ever really understand it, because Clint didn't do it with everything. She gave him a pair of purple sunglasses once and he had been delighted, wore them daily and was genuinely sad when one of the lenses broke. And after they joined the Avengers Tony had made him a number of custom bows that Clint used religiously and guarded as jealously as Gollum.

She never asked him about it, and as far as Natasha knew, Phil and Clint had discussed the missing presents only once. They had stopped for the night in a motel room, making their way slowly back to headquarters after a domestic mission. Natasha awoke to hear them talking quietly; she was in one of the two queen beds, Phil and Clint sharing the other. They lay on their sides, facing and leaning toward one another, foreheads almost touching, making a sort of heart shape with their bodies.

"You could use it, you know." Phil had given Clint a vintage Walkman and a handful of audiocassettes for this birthday earlier that week. "That would make me happy, to see you enjoying it." Clint didn't answer, and Phil went on. "I can stop the Tour. It was supposed to make you guys happy, but I worry. I worry that it hurts you instead."

"I never got to keep anything before," Clint said finally, almost too quietly for her to hear.

"Hawkeye, you haven't been an orphan for a long time. That isn't your life anymore."

"Never show anyone what you like best," Clint whispered, his voice sad. "Or they'll take it away from you. Then, if you're lucky, they'll let you earn it back. Until they take it again."

Phil's breath caught. "No," he said, quiet but emphatic. "Just, _no_. Shield isn't like that. _I'm_ not like that."

And Clint answered with the certainty of every child that had ever been thrown away, every person that had ever been hurt in the ways he and Natasha had been.

"Everyone is like that."

*******

 Clint finally gives up trying to wrestle the blankets away and just lays down beside her, closing his eyes.

She cuddles up close; the fever makes him nice and warm. 

*******

 It's genuinely strange to see Steve ill. Bruce takes his temperature and gives him some Tylenol that he doubts will even help, and then is kind of at a loss.

Tony orbits them both frenetically, a fretful moon of obnoxious energy. "Maybe the serum has worn off," he suggests. "It's the end for you, Cap. The chickens have come home to roost!" He's joking...mostly.

"Yeah, I don't think so," Steve says, bewildered, running a hand over his sweaty face. "I think it's from the mission, that gunk from the lab. Maybe it was poisoned."

"That was two days ago! That's not it," Tony protests, but guesses from the stricken look on Bruce's face that he does not agree. "Bruce and I aren't sick," he tries again.

"I was the Hulk, and you were covered in body armor," Bruce observes, then bites his lip, looks worried. "Natasha and Clint," he says finally, not elaborating further.

He doesn't need to. Tony curses angrily while Steve and Bruce exchange miserable looks. Because if Captain America has fallen ill from his exposure, then their absent friends are likely dying by now.

*******

 When they are sick, they hide.

They had both learned it the hard way, that to hide weakness was the first and most important form of self preservation. And what can't be hidden, must be controlled, must be presented in the way they choose.

They typically don't bother hiding things from each other, not anymore; they have known each other too long and too well. Of course, they are not typically sick at the same time. Injured together, sure, too many times to count--but hardly ever sick. And now they both are, terribly so.

Natasha lays on the bed with her eyes trained blurrily on the bedroom door. Reverting to old habits and instincts, keeping watch for any threat is the only thing she can think to do right now. Of course, if anyone does come in there is nothing she can do about it. She can barely move.

 _You're dying_ , the Black Widow in her says dispassionately.

"I'm dying," she whispers in agreement, too weak to even be sad about it.

Clint is beside her, like always. His eyes are bloodshot and staring, his breathing both ragged and shallow. He doesn't bother watching the door. His hands clench and unclench compulsively.

Natasha doesn't believe in God, but she wishes she could, because if she did she would pray for ice from the non-functional ice maker to fall straight into her lips. And if God didn't listen she would happily sell her soul in exchange for a drink of anything cool. Clint had been good about getting her glass after glass of water, moving sluggishly but doggedly, doing it for her. But it has been hours now since he last got up from the bed, and while she cares on some level that he is also sick, she would beg him unabashedly to get her a drink, would bully and shame him into doing it if that's what it took, if only she could summon the energy to yell at him. But she can't. She can't do anything.

They're dying here, hidden away where the team can't find them. She feels vague echo of guilt for how upset the others will surely feel when their bodies are discovered. 

"Dying," she says again.

"Okay," Clint whispers suddenly, his voice raspy and almost unrecognizable. "Okay. Okay. Okay." He takes a shuddering breath and kind of slides himself off the bed. He lands on his hands and knees and stays there, gasping. "Okay."

"Clint--" She reaches for him, doesn't want him to leave, but wants him to get her a drink of water all the same. She's never been so thirsty in her life.

His eyes roll toward her and there is a hazy recognition in them. He grabs the edge of the bed and pulls himself unsteadily to his feet. He stumbles bonelessly from the room, shoulders bouncing off either side of the door frame as he exits.

He does not return.

And Natasha goes away for awhile, too.

 *******

 Steve shivers and sweats and tries to rest as Bruce suggested, but worry makes that impossible. He gives up after an hour and settles on silently watching the others work. He has no idea how to assist, and hopes they can think of something he can do before he is driven mad from helplessness.

Bruce works in his lab, using Steve's blood and a sample of the sludge that they had saved, trying to develop an antidote. It isn't exceptionally hard work; he has done this sort of thing a depressing number of times with the Avengers, but it isn't a particularly fast process, either. Things only grow and culture as fast as they will, and all the nail chewing and frantic energy in the world won't make anything happen more quickly.

Tony and JARVIS exhaust every way they can think of to locate Clint and Natasha, but even before they started Tony knew it would be a pointless endeavor. Disappearing, going to ground, it was what the Shield agents _did_ , what they excelled at. They might never be found if they did not wish to be. Tony is sure they were in the city somewhere, but finding two individuals in a population of 8.5 million...he isn't optimistic about locating them, but is still going to try, needles and haystacks be damned.

It is their good fortune, and Clint's famously bad luck, that gives them their first and only lead.

JARVIS had been monitoring hospitals from the start, and the AI interrupts its own conversation with Tony when the record pops up. "Sir, I have a hospital admission that may meet your criteria. An unidentified white male possibly matching Agent Barton's description was brought by ambulance to an emergency room after being located at the bottom of an apartment stairwell. He has a broken arm, multiple contusions, possible head injury, and a high fever of unexplained origin."

Steve and Tony's desperate eyes meet.

"It's Tweetie Bird. It is." Tony is absolutely positive the unknown patient is Clint, _needs_ it to be him. "What about Natasha, JARVIS?"

"No corresponding admission of a female matching the parameters of Agent Romanov."

"Let's get to the hospital," Steve suggests, and Tony is already moving to do just that when Bruce stops them. He has a bag full of medical supplies slung over one shoulder.

"Where is the building they found him?" he asks. As JARVIS dutifully gives the address, Bruce points out "If that's Clint, he's in the hospital already, getting help. Maybe not what he needs, because what he needs is this--" he holds up several syringes, each loaded with an antidote--"but enough help to keep him stable until we can get there. But Natasha isn't in the hospital; she's probably still holed up somewhere in the building where they found Clint. We need to get to her first."

Bruce unceremoniously jabs Steve in the arm with one of the syringes, then slaps it onto the counter as they run out.

*******

 "Oh great, they live in biggest building in the whole world," Steve observes, frustrated, when they arrive. He's already feeling better. "How do we narrow it down from this?"

Tony just rolls his eyes at the hyperbole and hurries over to a group of teenagers sitting on the front steps. "Hey. Did you fellas happen to see the guy get taken out by the ambulance earlier?"

One of the boys regards them with suspicious, but interested, eyes. "Yeah. He was in the stairwell, all busted up. Looked dead."

Bruce flinches at that. "Do you know him? Do you know where he lives in the building?"

"Yeah, it was Mr. K.," another boy says. "The ambulance people, they asked his name but no one can ever remember it--too hard to pronounce. They're foreign; everyone just calls them Mr. and Mrs. K. They live somewhere up on seven."

Bruce thanks the kid and rushes after Tony and Steve, who are already sprinting up the stairs, Steve taking them two and three at a time.

"JARVIS, check leases on the seventh floor for any likely names," Tony barks, his heart beating wildly.

"There is a C and N Kuznetsov listed at apartment 708," JARVIS answers placidly back through Tony's watch.

"I can't believe it," Tony says to Bruce, both of them panting already as they hit the fifth floor stairs. "It's not like them to be so obvious. What the hell kind of spies are they?"

"It's so they can speak Russian while they're here," Bruce suggests, looking thoughtful and a little sad, and Tony knows immediately that he is right. "So she can speak her own language for awhile. They did it for her."

*******

 In the end they don't need Steve to break down the door; Clint had left it unlocked after he had stumbled out, trying to go for help before he ended up passing out on the stairs.

They walk right in to a tidy apartment and find Natasha delirious in her bedroom, dying under a hideous purple unicorn blanket.

*******

 Tony doesn't bother with the information desk; he heads straight toward the intensive care ward he knew housed Clint. An older woman at the nurses' station frowns at him.

"Can I help you with something, sir?" she asks, though her tone told him in no uncertain terms that what she intended to help him with exactly nothing.

"Yes, a friend of mine has fallen ill and gone missing; we've been looking for him at hospitals and I am checking if he is here. He doesn't have his ID with him and might be checked under the wrong name, or no name."

"We can't give out any personal information about our patients," the young male nurse next to her says apologetically.

"My friend might be too sick to tell you who he is," Tony argues, "or to even recognize me."

The woman narrows her eyes at him, deeply suspicious, but the man still looks sympathetic, so Tony focuses all of his efforts on him.

"How about I describe my friend, and you just listen, and decide if it could be one of your patients. He's about this tall, white guy, has short light brown hair. If he's been awake at all, he probably tried to run out on you guys." And _that_ seems to get their attention, the two exchanging a look, and Tony, encouraged, digs out his cellphone. "See? This is him and I together; we know each other, we're friends." It is the only picture on his phone Tony has of them together without any of the others; he wants to compromise their group identity as little as possible.

The nurse's resolve is wavering, he can see it, so Tony gives one last push. "He has a star shaped scar on his upper chest from a gunshot wound and another on his leg--I think it's the left leg. He has a long scar on his forearm that runs from here to here"--Tony indicates on his own arm--"and his back is a mishmash of old and new. He's kind of sensitive about it."

And Tony suddenly finds himself choked up, the recital of Clint's old injuries combined with the stress of finding Natasha in the horrible condition she had been in piling onto him a little. "He always wears a shirt, even when he swims," he adds, not sure exactly why he does, and when his voice wavers just a bit, the nurse's severe expression evaporates entirely.

"He's here," she confirms. "He is very ill; the doctors haven't determined what's wrong with him yet. He has a very high fever and at the rate things have been progressing they're afraid he will be in organ failure very soon. I'm sorry."

"Let me see him, please. He'll want to see me, I know he will."

"He's in isolation. He may be contagious, we just don't know."

"Please," Tony says again, not caring that he is begging. "Please."

And finally they take pity on him, leading him back to a locked area. The young man hands Tony a gown and full face mask to wear--they must think Clint has Ebola or something--and even two pair of latex gloves.

The guy watches Tony fumble these things on then swipes his ID badge to unlock the door. "You're Tony Stark, aren't you?"

"Yeah." There isn't much point in lying about it.

"I thought you were! That's so cool. So, who is this guy?" the man asks. He licks his lips and his eyes sparkle a bit, obviously excited at the thought of a celebrity of sorts being in the hospital. "Is he one of the other Avengers? Is he somebody special?"

Tony frowns at him. "Yeah, he's somebody special. He's my friend."

*******

 Clint looks terrible, pale and lifeless, surrounded by beeping monitors. His right arm is casted and there are bruises and bandages on his face from the fall down the stairs. Tony feels a rush of anger that he's been stashed back here in this locked room, dying alone.

"It'd be good if you could give us information about him," the male nurse says. "It might help us treat him. We've been flying blind."

"Listen," Tony answers, "I'll tell you whatever I know about his health history, but it isn't much. And I'll cover his medical expenses. You know that I can. Just leave him listed as John Doe, and I'll take care of the cost. Can we make that happen?"

"Yeah, okay. There's some forms I need you to fill out, if you want to follow me." The man seems eager to leave the room, to escape whatever unknown disease is at play.

"Can you bring them here? I want to stay with him a minute."

"Alright. Don't touch anything, and don't touch _him_ , either."

"Sure, sure." Tony agrees, then rolls his eyes and grabs Clint's hand the second the door swings shut. "I'm gonna yell in your stupid face when you get all better, Tweetie Bird," Tony tells him softly. "But first, let's see if Bruce's gogo juice can counteract all the crap in your blood." He plucks the small syringe from his pocket and injects it swiftly into the IV port. "Come on, let's see a miraculous healing here. Barton, come forth, and all that jazz."

*******

 Natasha swims back to consciousness painfully, slowly. As is her lifelong habit, she takes in her surroundings as well as she can before opening her eyes. She knows that she is in bed, can tell by the smells and sounds that it is her city apartment. Someone is in the bed beside her, not touching her, but close. She thinks it must be Clint; no one else would be here, and so she is surprised when she opens her eyes to see Bruce looking back at her.

"Hey," he says gently. He reaches out but doesn't touch her; his hand sort of hovers above her shoulder.

"Bruce?" Her voice comes out in a croak; she blinks in surprise at the sound. She is even more startled to find that she has the energy to move a bit. She looks around, sees an IV bag dangling above her, strung up to hang somehow from the shelf above her bed. Steve is sitting in the corner, nervously drumming his fingers on his knees, and when he catches her eye gives her a tremulous half smile.

"Yeah, it's me. We're here. We've got you." This time Bruce's hand does touch her shoulder, then drifts up to her cheek.

"I'm glad," she rasps back, shutting her eyes again and smiling a little. "I'm glad it's you. I much prefer you to that Tony Stark, even if he _does_ have ten zillion pounds per year."

He doesn't get the joke, probably thinks it's just the fever talking, but he stays next to her all the same.

A few hours and several bags of fluids later Steve wraps her in the blanket and carries her out, Bruce trailing behind.

 *******

 The medical staff have just begun threatening to make Tony leave when Clint opens his eyes. The nurse gasps and hurries out to page the doctor, while Clint casts his eyes about frantically, taking in the room and equipment before settling on Tony, who grips the bed rail and waits expectantly. Upon seeing Stark, Clint relaxes noticeably, leaning his head back down to his pillow, sighing.

"You're alive, Natasha is alive," Tony says, cutting to the chase while he can, before medical personnel have the chance to pour in and interrupt them with a bunch of their own questions. "Now, can you guess what I've got cooking in my emotional oven? It's a rage casserole, Tweetie Bird, and it's for you and Romanov to share. It's on a low heat; it'll be done baking in two days, or by your discharge from the hospital, whichever comes first."

"Tony," Clint says weakly, reaching out.

Tony immediately reaches back, his mostly counterfeit anger evaporating immediately, entwining Clint's fingers with his own, his other hand gently stroking the archer's casted arm.

"I'm here, Clint. What is it, what do you need?"

"It's about the apartment..."

"Yeah? What is it? Tell me."

"The icemaker...doesn't work. Can you can fix it?" There is the ghost of a smile on his pale lips.

Tony is glad no one else is here to witness the half amused, half exasperated expression that crosses his face.

"Rage casserole," he repeats then, leaning forward, his mouth almost touching Clint's ear. "And you just turned up the heat; that sonofabitch is going to be done cooking even sooner."

His words may be threatening, but he never loosens his grip on his friend's hand.

*******

 "How about we make a deal--you both just fucking _say_ when you need a romantic getaway, okay?" Tony hovers somewhere between sincere and furious. "Just tell us and we'll promise not to bother you. But no more of this disappearing, off the grid stuff. No more of that. _Ever_!"

"It was never about getting away from the rest of you," Natasha tells him, then makes a face. "Well, maybe it was a little. But it was more of...just trying to get back a little piece of who we used to be. Just for awhile."

"Then tell us that," Steve says, "and we'll respect it. We will."

Natasha glances at Clint, who simply shrugs with his uninjured shoulder. "You'd think by now we would be past all this," she says. "Be past pleading one another for trust."

"Then stop testing us," Tony suggests, "and just _do_ it. Just have a little bit of faith in us. I mean, how else do you want us to prove ourselves to you? Hold hands in a sharing circle? Do a trust fall?" He throws his hands up, as dramatic and annoying to her as ever, but she can see the shadows under his eyes, can see how worried he had been for them.

"A trust fall? Why, are you going to catch us, Iron Man?" Clint asks, only half teasing.

"I promise," Tony says earnestly.

And they believe him.

******* 

_Epilogue_

 "They thought you were dead," she said with a smirk the day Clint returned after the fall of Shield, as the others hugged him frantically. "Stark practically had your obituary written."

He laughed.

But in their Tower apartment she had embraced at him at last, desperately, her hands curled into claws that twisted into his shirt, his arms clutching back, his hand running through her long hair again and again.

"I can't believe it," he kept whispering, his eyes wide. "I just can't believe it."

"Sitwell was one of them," she said back. "That somehow gets me the most. _Jasper_ _Sitwell_ , of all people!" Her body shakes, the emotions held closely in check for two weeks falling out in full force now that they are alone. "And Fury--he suspected Hydra. Maybe knew. I just can't understand it."

They don't say Phil's name, but they can't help but think of him; his color was woven everywhere throughout the tapestry that had been Shield. "He didn't know," Clint said confidently, Natasha understanding immediately whom he meant, his faith in the man unshakeable even through death. "He didn't know, because he would've stopped it."

Natasha agreed. Anything else was simply unbelievable. She nodded into his shoulder.

"Orphaned again," Clint said sadly, as they held one another tightly.

She was scared in the weeks that followed, scared that losing Shield would be too much for Clint. That it would be the final thing, the final loss, the one he could not take after suffering so many others--where he would finally lose his laugh and not find it again, that he would take to bed and not be able to rise. She was afraid, so afraid, to be the only thing he had left.

But it the end her fears seemed to be unfounded; he had taken the death of Shield far better than she would have ever dreamed. He rallied, leaned into his life with her and the Avengers, made them be enough.

It was only long afterward that it occurred to her that Clint had been frightened too. He had possessed the same fears--of that need to run with no safe haven to turn to, of being desperate. Of what would happen if those feelings would become too much, becoming overwhelming, what weapons now empty hands would grab for.

But he had not had those fears for himself, she realized.

He'd had them for her.

 *******

 "Clint," she says, running her fingertips over the cast on his arm. "Where would I be without you?"

"You'd be just fine," he answers. "You're a survivor, so strong. But, you have me, all the same." His tone turns lighter, and he snuggles close to her. "I broke my arm and my head trying to get you help. I had to eat hospital jello and be scowled at and lectured by Tony and mean doctors. So... _now_ can I be your Mr. Darcy, Miss Romanov?"

"You're better than Mr. Darcy," she tells him with a smile, leaning her head gently against his, mindful of the bruises. "You're real."

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Before I had my own children I was a social worker. One of the kids actually did tell me once "Never let people know what you like, or they'll take it away and make you earn it back." It was one of the saddest things I have ever heard.


End file.
